Earlier today, Kim Jones debuted his first womenswear collection for Fendi, drawing on his longtime fascination with the Bloomsbury Group and mixing it with the house’s codes as well as references to its Italian heritage and tenure under Karl Lagerfeld.
It was a darkly romantic offering of suits, capes and evening gowns that spanned time and blurred genders — a key trope of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando — something that was felt in the co-ed, intergenerational casting (Kate and Lila Grace Moss, Christy and James Turlington, Demi Moore and Scout Willis).
Then, of course, there was the hair and makeup, which played an integral part in bringing these references to life. Encapsulating the fluidity of both time and gender, hairstylist Sam McKnight presented models with various iterations of the wet look.
“We took a lot of the hair references from the pictures of the Bloomsbury Set,” he tells Vogue over the phone. “But we didn’t want it to be too ‘period’, so we made the hair wet as if they’ve been caught in the rain and the garden. The hair looks like it’s been done in some kind of romantic updo at the back, in a folded chignon, but it’s wet so it starts to fall out. It’s a moment really, more of a mood than a studied look.”
Other key features included soft waves worn at the front, shown on some of the women and men to create a kind of synergy between the sexes, and sumptuous hair accessories spun from Venetian glass. To complement this, makeup artist Peter Philips played around with pearlescent textures around the eyes and luminous accents on skin. “It was all about reflections,” he muses. “It was on the edge of looking wet without being wet. There was a strength and fragility to the look.”
As for blurring genders, Philips was careful not to let it get too gimmicky or conceptual, instead opting for a bold red lip for some of the men, and keeping it natural with a little gloss for the women. “It was subtle, but elegant,” he says. The result was poetic and deeply emotional, one that stands Jones in good stead for seasons to come.
